Travel blogging, just like any other blog-related work, revolves around building a quality blog that your viewers can enjoy and consistently follow. After all, nobody likes following a blog that lacks even rudimentary features such as navigation. But to create a good blog, you would first need to find good plugins to help you build the website to your satisfaction.
And while your goals may be either very specific or quite general, building a well-rounded blog will definitely benefit you. That’s where WordPress plugins come in, as they are perfect supplements for your page. As there are many plugins in the WordPress catalog, it might seem difficult to find the plugins that would perfectly suit what you need.
That’s where this article comes in, as we will outline some of the best plugins that are currently available and are going to come in handy when making a travel blog.
1. Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode
When it comes to a landing page or coming soon page creation, there is probably no better plugin than Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode. It offers over 170 unique themes that you can use as your landing page, or if you are doing a premiere release of a travel blog or vlog, you can use it as a coming soon countdown page.
This plugin is handy since creating landing pages is quick and easy, especially with some of the provided themes. This plugin provides a lot of themes for different topics, from shopping to banking, but also features some of the best themes for an up-and-coming travel blogger. So, here are some of our top picks, just to show you how great these can be.
Romantic Travels
If you are planning on creating a blog that centers around not only you but your partner as well, the Romantic Travels theme might be the very thing you need. It offers a straightforward landing page that can be expanded upon and creating a lovely page that leads into your and your SO’s adventures.
Travel Blog
If you’d rather prefer your landing page to have a bit of a panoramic feel, the Travel Blog theme should fit just right.
Travel Agency
And if you’d want something a tad more interactive, the Travel Agency theme’s got you covered with its interactive Google Maps integration.
2. Google Maps Widget PRO
Speaking of integrating Google Maps, which everyone should do if they want a successful travel blog, Google Maps Widget PRO offers an awesome plugin that allows you to integrate interactive Google Maps with your website. As it initially only loads a static map, it speeds up your blog loading time tremendously.
The widget works separately from any theme you are using, so there won’t be any interference between them, which also helps load time optimization.
With Google Maps Widget PRO, you can edit the map to suit your needs, add custom pins, change the style of the map, and adjust the size and shape of the map. And the best part is, it’s super easy to use. You don’t need to be a programming master that explores through a jungle of code just to put a map up. In just a couple of simple clicks, you got it covered.
3. WP Reset
Installing new plugins can be quite tricky, especially if you aren’t a developer. WP Reset ensures that your page is running smoothly while providing a safety net for you when you are experimenting. It safely backs-up your work so that when an update to a plugin inevitably breaks your page, you can go back with just one click.
And if something is beyond salvaging, don’t worry. WP Reset offers a “nuclear” solution, i.e., a complete reset of all options and databases so that you can always go back to a baseline that works.
But, to save you all of the work of reinstalling all the plugins back, WP Resets can group-install all your plugins with just a few clicks. It’s a strong management and backup plugin that can save you from some devastating unintentional mistakes.
4. BackupGuard
While there are other alternatives in the market for backup plugins, BackupGuard has an incredible advantage because it can be purchased in a single payment, unlike most of its competitors. It offers a complete backup and restoration service, which is crucial in managing websites and blogs. Without BackupGuard, a silly technical mistake might turn your entire website to dust.
But with this plugin, you’ll be able to sleep soundly knowing that your blog is safe from corrupted files or silly bugs.
And the best part is BackupGuard comes with an integrated Security plugin, so your travel blog will also be safe behind a strong firewall. BackupGuard also offers consistent backups, so you’ll be able to construct a complete timeline of what went wrong and when.
5. If-So Dynamic Content
If-So Dynamic Content is a WordPress plugin specifically designed to dynamically alter your website’s content according to your visitors’ personalized data. If-So allows you to customize your pages’ content with various factors like geolocation, time of day, age, gender, and even Google search terms that your customer frequents without any coding.
And as If-So has an integrated statistics tab, you’ll be able to track how many viewers pass through your site and how many have their content altered to their tastes.
Going even further, you can integrate Google Analytics for even more trackable data. And with such analyses, you’ll be able to determine what versions of your blog attracted the most visitors and which visitors stayed the longest.
6. WP Travel Engine
When it comes to writing a travel blog, you want to connect to your audience as much as you can, and what better way to connect than by offering them a similar experience to your own. With WP Travel Engine, you can create bookings and tour packages just like a travel agency. And as the base plugin is completely free, you won’t need to worry about additional costs at all.
While some additional, premium, add-on plugins could be useful, they are absolutely not necessary for it to function properly.
WP Travel Engine doesn’t limit you to how many packages you can create and offers an extensive editor to tailor those packages to your site’s design. Whenever someone would book a trip via your blog, you’d get automatically notified so you can track all the booking details. And when it comes to writing about trip details, you won’t be limited by a small text box or a limited amount of characters.
Speaking of details, you can make a special destination page for whatever destination you visited/are going to visit that can offer all possible travel packages at the time. And if you want to show your visitors what activities you attended, you can add an Activities page to connect to available trips.
7. WP Airbnb Review Slider
If you want to present yourself as a pleasant and competent traveler, there is probably no better way than showing someone your Airbnb reviews. That’s why WP Airbnb Review Slider is handy not only to hosts and renters but travelers as well. You can set your reviews as a static grid or a dynamic slider.
The latter saves on space and makes your blog look smaller and sleeker, while the former can project a stronger sense of scale with how many reviews you have.
You can set up display options however you see fit; how big the comments are, are they dated or not, hide or show the star rating system, etc. And you needn’t worry about how your page will look on smartphones as WP Airbnb Review Slider is mobile friendly.
8. The Events Calendar
When you travel, it isn’t at all unusual to keep an itinerary to track your activities. wAnd why not have that itinerary on your blog so your viewers can see what you were up to each specific day. That’s why The Events Calendar plugin is perfect for up-and-coming travel bloggers who want to share with their audience as much of their trip as possible.
With its multiple calendar types, you can make detailed calendars that are effective, tl;drs of your trips (although we all know the real charm of the trips always lies in little details and not in the itinerary) or if you are planning a future trip with your viewers (which isn’t as uncommon as you think) you can show them what events and activities you have planned and what they’ll need to book for.
And if you aren’t fond of endlessly editing components to make a perfect calendar, there are plenty of preset options you can just stick onto your blog and be done with them. If this one doesn’t work, you can try a different booking plugin.
9. WP Sticky
If you look back on some of the earlier mentioned plugins, especially the ones that add extra functions to your blog, you might be asking yourself, “but what if I want that map or calendar constantly present on my blog and in the viewers’ visual range?” That’s where WP Sticky comes in. It’s a specialized plugin that can make certain elements of your website “stick” onto your screen.
For example, have you ever seen a website header that follows you when you scroll down? Well, that’s WP Sticky’s job. It’s a really useful plugin since it can make navigating your page easy (with a sticky header) and keep your viewers engaged with your story since they won’t need to scroll up and down the blog whenever they want to reference your story to a map that you placed at the beginning of your post.
It has no compatibility issues as it just “sticks” elements to a screen and therefore doesn’t interfere with various themes and other plugins. And considering how quick and easy to use it is, not getting it would certainly be a detriment to your blog.
10. Social Media Share Buttons Popup & Pop Up Social Sharing Icons
As with any other online blogging work, making your blog successful depends on your beautiful writing style and how much it can get shared on social media. That’s why every travel blog should have the Social Media Share Buttons Popup & Pop Up Social Sharing Icons plugins so you can get all your viewers to share your work with the world.
This plugin allows you to place a multitude of social media sharing buttons all over your blog, from sticky widgets to static buttons you spread throughout your post. There are so many options of button logos to choose from, so you don’t need to worry whether or not they suit your style. You can even have animated logos, and they always pull more attention than the non-animated ones.
And if you want to show off how popular you are, you can even make a visible count of how many people shared your blog via the share buttons.
11. NextGEN Gallery
While writing blog posts about your travels is fun and all, you need some accompanying pictures to have a successful travel blog. That’s one of the reasons why NextGEN Gallery is such a popular WordPress gallery management plugin. With NextGEN Gallery, you can upload and delete photos, rearrange them create slideshows, thumbnails, and even make albums.
There really aren’t any reasons not to get it.
Even if you have a dedicated visual travel blog (like a youtube vlog), you can still put pictures onto your blog site as a sort of “deleted scenes or bonus content.” And since managing sizes and formats are made simple, you also don’t need to be a professional photographer just to have some pictures on your blog.
12. Travelpayouts
With Travelpayouts, you can show your community how and where to get the cheapest possible transportation as well as quality accommodations, especially if you are going to focus on doing sponsored content. But it is important to note that this plugin isn’t intended for advertising but rather gives you specialized widgets and tables that you can provide your visitors so that they can compare various offers that you found.
With Travelpayouts, you can show your visitors that the way you traveled and budgeted for your trip isn’t necessarily the right way and that other people might find different options more appealing. After all, not everyone is suited for backpacking and CouchSurfing travel style, just how a lot of people couldn’t afford to go on extremely VIP-focused trips either.
Final Thoughts
All in all, building a travel blog takes quite an effort, but with some useful WordPress plugins, your job might be just that much easier. And these plugins will save you the time that you could then use to travel the world. Quite frankly, these plugins are only the tip of the iceberg of what WordPress offers, but for starters, you won’t need much more than them.